Category: Behind The Black

Engineers locate helium flow issue on SLS upper stage

8:01 am

NASA last evening posted an update on the status of its SLS rocket, noting that engineers had located the seal that had caused the helium flow issue in the upper stage during unfueling after the wet dress rehearsal two weeks ago.

Engineers determined a seal in the quick disconnect, through which helium flows from the ground systems to the rocket, was obstructing the pathway. The team removed the quick disconnect, reassembled the system, and began validating the repairs to the upper stage by running a reduced flow rate of helium through the mechanism to ensure the issue was resolved. Engineers are assessing what allowed the seal to become dislodged to prevent the issue from recurring.

Though this information is somewhat vague, it strongly suggests the seal with the problem was in the upper stage, not the umbilical line that is part of the ground systems.

Before they can return the rocket to the launchpad, they need to make sure they identified the exact issue that caused the seal to not work properly. They also are replacing the batteries in the rocket’s self-destruct system as well as flight batteries in the upper stage, core stage, and two strap-on solid-fueled boosters. It also appears they are replacing another seal the oxygen feed line for the core stage.

Once this work is finished and confirmed, they will still need to roll SLS back to the launchpad and likely do another wet dress rehearsal countdown, though that rehearsal might be condensed to focus on these issues specifically.

The present launch window closes on April 6th, so the timeline is very tight. NASA management is reviewing later windows in late April as well as May and June.

Despite the major reshaping of the later missions in the Artemis program that NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced last week, this upcoming Artemis-2 mission remains the same, a ten-mission carrying four astronauts around the Moon using an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield and an untested life support system.

2 comments

March 3, 2026 Quick space links

2:52 pm

As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

8 comments

Charon’s surface, completely unlike Pluto

1:09 pm

Panorama of part of Charon's surface
Click for full resolution. For original images go here, here, and here.

Charon

Cool image time! The panorama above, created from three images taken by New Horizons as it began its July 14, 2015 fly-by of the Pluto-Charon double planet system (found here, here, and here), show in close-up one specific swath of Charon cutting across its equatorial regions.

The true color global image of Charon to the right shows the approximate area covered by the panorama above. For scale, Charon has a diameter of about 750 miles, about half that of Pluto. For clarity I have rotated the panorama so that it more closely aligns with the rectangle of global image.

One of the most remarkable discoveries made during New Horizons’ fly-by was how completely different Pluto and Charon appeared, despite their likely formation together at the same time and in the same location of the early solar system. While Pluto had frozen nitrogen seas and water ice mountains floating at the shores, Charon more resembled Mercury, cratered with many large ridges and canyons criss-crossing its service. Both planets appear to be icy, but somehow Charon appears to lack the large differentiated variety of materials seen on Pluto.

Leave a comment

While Democrats rage against the American/Israel war on Iran, the PEOPLE celebrate

11:05 am

Without doubt there remain great risks and real constitutional issues involved the present military campaign by both the United States and Israel to destroy the Islamic leadership in Iran. First, it is almost impossible to force a change in power solely by air power. This has been tried numerous times, with little success. Killing the leaders of this terrorist Iranian government is a positive step, but it remains entirely unclear whether this war can produce a better government there.

Second, as much as there might be legal precedents that allow President Trump to initiate this action without direct congressional approval, it continues a dangerous trend ceding power away from Congress and to the presidency, in direct opposition to the intentions of the Founding Fathers in their writing of the Constitution. They very much were opposed to giving any president the power to start a war unilaterally.

Pro-U.S. and Israeli demonstrations by Iranians
Click here and here for original videos.

Having stated the reasonable objections to this military action, however, we must now take a look at the two images to the right to see its immediate and very positive consequences. Both pictures are from videos of very spontaneous demonstrations on February 28, 2026 by Iranian refugees celebrating the American/Israeli attacks against Iran.

The top picture is a screen capture from a demonstration in Georgetown, DC. The bottom picture is a screen capture from a demonstration in Austin, Texas.

Note the flags in both pictures. There are numerous flags of Iran (the version during the Shah’s rule, not the version from the Islamic Revolution). There are many American flags, of course, since these demonstrations are in America.

What is most revealing however are the Israeli flags, being enthusiastically waved by Iranians. Clearly the decades of hate against Israel and Jews by the mullahs in Iran has not had any impact on these Iranian refugees. In fact, in the video of the bottom picture they are chanting “Thank you, Bibi!”, referring to Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu as the camera pans across the crowd.

Moreover, these demonstrations took place in two Democratic Party strongholds, cities where pro-Hamas demonstrations have been routine, including rioting and violence against Jews and anyone who dared suggest Israel’s actions in Gaza might be justified.

Nor are these two demonstrations an exception. They have been the rule across the United States and Europe, as well as in Iran itself. The public — the ordinary people for whom governments are meant to serve — seem very much in favor of what President Trump and Netanyahu are doing in Iran. And they are expressing that support of both America and Israel quite unequivocally. If this doesn’t indicate to the world that Israel and the rest of the Middle East can live together in peace and mutual cooperation, nothing can.

This conclusion is further supported by the response by almost every Arab nation in the Middle East, most of whom started off quite willing to let the U.S. and Israel do this deed, with no opposition or with covert support. Now, because of Iran’s indiscriminate attacks on Arab nations, they have all publicly joined the war, allying themselves not with the Islamic nation of Iran but with the U.S. and Israel.

I would not be surprised if Saudi Arabia soon signs the Abraham Accords. Nor would I be surprised if most of the last remaining Arab nations that have not yet done so join Saudi Arabia.

We could very well be seeing a major realignment of alliances in the Middle East that could really really harbinger the beginnings of real peace in that region. Imagine: Israel at peace with all its neighbors, because the Arabs have finally recognized that it is to their own best interest to do so as well.

33 comments

Old and new optical space telescopes team up to view the Cat’s Eye

9:39 am

Cat's Eye Nebula as seen by both Hubble and Euclid
Click for original images.

Astronomers using both NASA’s long established Hubble Space Telescope and Europe’s new Euclid space telescope have produced new optical/infrared images of the Cat’s Eye planetary nebula.

Those images are to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. The Hubble image at bottom shows the complex structure of the nebula itself, located about 4,400 light years away and believed created by the inner orbital motions of a binary star system that act almost like the blades in a blender, mixing the material thrown off by one or both of the stars as they erupt in their latter stages of life.

In Euclid’s wide, near-infrared, and visible light view, the arcs and filaments of the nebula’s bright central region are situated within a halo of colorful fragments of gas zooming away from the star. This ring was ejected from the star at an earlier stage, before the main nebula at the center formed. The whole nebula stands out against a backdrop teeming with distant galaxies, demonstrating how local astrophysical beauty and the farthest reaches of the cosmos can be seen together with Euclid.

Euclid has a primary mirror 1.2 meters in diameter, about half that of Hubble. Though it can’t zoom in with the same resolution, its view is as sharp since it is in space above the atmosphere. It thus provides a wider view, which in this case helps provide a larger context to the detailed close-up view provided by Hubble.

In many ways Euclid is Hubble’s replacement, produced by the European Space Agency, as NASA and the American astronomy community has not been able to get together to build their own new optical orbiting telescope.

2 comments

Japan to do vertical tests of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage this month

9:13 am

Japan’s space agency is about to attempt two test vertical take-off-and-landing test flights of of its own Grasshopper-type demo stage, dubbed RV-X later this month.

First flight of a small experimental version of a reusable launch vehicle has been scheduled for March 6 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). The 24-ft.-tall vertical-takeoff-and-vertical-landing (VTVL) RV-X is planned to make a short hop at the agency’s Noshiro Rocket Testing Center on the Sea of Japan coast.

RV-X is the first of two flight experiments planned by JAXA on the path to development of a reusable first stage for a next-generation launch vehicle. A second vehicle is planned to fly in 2027 under the multinational Callisto program.

Callisto is being developed jointly with the European Space Agency. Both it and RV-X have been in development for about a decade. Both were initiated in response to SpaceX’s successful reuse of its Falcon 9 first stage. Both projects however appeared stalled until the last two years or so, with little happening.

The JAXA engine on RV-X is apparently the engine it is providing for Callisto. If the flight tests are successful this March, it will be the be transferred to French Guiana for Callisto tests planned no sooner than ’27.

Leave a comment

Russia completes repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur

8:47 am

According to Roscosmos, it has completed the repairs to Soyuz-2 launchpad at Baikonur, and will do launch a Progress freighter to ISS on March 22, 2026.

According to the State Corporation, a total of 150 workers from four contractor organizations prepared and painted 2,350 square meters of structures, replaced all the attachment devices, replaced and tuned up electric equipment and inspected or serviced all the systems and mechanisms of the service platform. The team also made 250 welding lines.

The most complex task was the installation of the platform elements, some of which had a length of 19 meters and mass of 17 tons, which required a development of special methodic, Roskosmos said.

The State Corporation confirmed that the first mission departing from the repaired launch pad at Site 31 was scheduled for March 22, 2026, carrying the Progress MS-33 cargo ship to the ISS.

For Russia, this repair was completed remarkably fast. But then, the Russians generally get things done fast when it is absolutely essential to do so. Without that pad, Russia had no way to launch any astronauts in space. Nor could it send supplies to ISS. A delay would have been very public and embarrassing.

If there is no immediate need, however, its projects drag on endlessly.

Leave a comment

March 2, 2026 Quick space links

2:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who is off on a two week vacation, so no quick links for awhile. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

5 comments

Two moons of Saturn against its majestic rings

12:25 pm

Mimas and second moon against Saturn's rings
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, was taken on December 23, 2005 by Cassini as it orbited Saturn.

The larger cratered moon is Mimas, known best for the single giant crater that dominates one hemisphere. I have not been able to identify the brighter but smaller moon.

Note the pattern within the largest bright central ring in the background. It is possible this is an optical illusion, but it is also possible this pattern is inherent in the ring itself. Other images show similar patterns that scientists have concluded were real.

This image was part of a set of eight images all taken in the space of less than two minutes, as the smaller moon moved from the lower left to the upper right and was eclipsed by Minas as it did so. Below are four of those pictures, showing the sequence.
» Read more

8 comments

Sunspot update: Sunspot activity tumbles in February, including the 1st blank days since ’22

10:53 am

The uncertainty of science! It is the start of the month, and thus time for another sunspot update, using NOAA’s monthly graph of the sunspot activity on the Earth-facing hemisphere, updated by NOAA to include the activity in February but annotated with extra information by me to illustrate the larger scientific context.

Last month I lambasted NOAA’s solar science panel for its consistently failed predictions, and made a tentative prediction of my own, suggesting the ramp down to solar minimum might not be occurring as they had predicted in April 2025.

This month I can lambast myself, because the Sun in February saw a significant drop in sunspots, including three consecutive days in which the Sun was blank of spots, for the first time since 2022. This drop supports the NOAA panel prediction and makes my prediction look foolish, but it also suggests the ramp down is continuing to go faster than predicted.
» Read more

2 comments

Indian rocket startup Agnikul completes static fire test of three-engine cluster

8:59 am

The Indian rocket startup Agnikul has now released a video of a 40-second static fire test of three-engine cluster it hopes to use on its Agnibaan orbital rocket.

The engines, powered by electric motor-driven pumps, were designed and manufactured in-house at Agnikul’s Rocket Factory-1. All three were fully 3D-printed as single-piece hardware units, reflecting the startup’s focus on advanced manufacturing and indigenous engineering.

Co-founder and chief executive Srinath Ravichandran said that increasing the number of engines improves rocket performance and that a three-engine system is required for commercial missions. The clustered test involved calibrating six pumps and six motors and fine-tuning six independent speed control algorithms to function in synchronisation. The goal was to achieve uniform startup, steady-state operation and shutdown performance across all three engines, a technically complex process given the precision required in semi-cryogenic propulsion systems.

The company has completed one suborbital test launch in May 2024, and in September 2025 said its orbital rocket’s first stage will land vertically and be reused.

Agnikul however has not released any schedule for launch, and based on this static fire test appears years from a first launch. It is making progress, but slowly. At the same time, it says it has raised $500 million in private investment capital, giving it the resources to build the rocket.

Based on testing and published progress, Agnikul appears to be trailing India’s other rocket startup Skyroot, though this could change in the coming year.

Leave a comment

Rocket Lab completes in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters

8:38 am

Built by Rocket Lab for NASA and launched in November 2025, the company has now completed the in-space commissioning of two Escapade Mars orbiters and is about to hand operations over to the University of California Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory (UC-Berkeley).

With both spacecraft now fully commissioned and successfully operating at the Earth–Sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), Rocket Lab is preparing to hand over operational control to [UC-Berkeley], who will lead science operations at L2 and prepare the mission for its cruise to Mars.

Under contract from [UC-Berkeley], Rocket Lab was selected to design, build, and provide commissioning operations of the two high delta-V Explorer-class interplanetary spacecraft for ESCAPADE. Rocket Lab moved from concept to launch readiness in just over three years, proving commercial collaboration can deliver important science key to supporting future human and robotic exploration of Mars on ambitious schedules and for significantly smaller budgets than typical interplanetary missions. This speed was made possible through Rocket Lab’s vertically integrated spacecraft production, with key components including solar arrays, reaction wheels, propellant tanks, star trackers, radios, avionics, and flight software designed and built in-house.

Launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in November 2025, the twin ESCAPADE spacecraft, known as Blue and Gold, completed spacecraft commissioning and executed two precise trajectory correction maneuvers, placing both spacecraft into their loiter trajectory near L2, approximately 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.

Both spacecraft will be sent on their way to Mars in December 2026 when orbital mechanics between the Red Planet and Earth are right for the journey. Once in Mars orbit the two orbiters will allow for a three-dimensional study of the interaction between the solar wind and Mars’ atmosphere.

Though this is a NASA-funded mission, note that it was built a commercial company and operated not by NASA but by a university. For this reason, it was not only built fast and at a low cost, it uses an innovative flight path that allowed it to be launched anytime and wait in orbit for the right moment to go to Mars. This last innovation provides for a lot more flexibility.

One comment

SpaceX completes its second Starlink launch today; Firefly scrubs launch

8:05 pm

SpaceX successfully placed another 29 Starlink satellites in orbit this evening during its second launch today, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage completed its 26th launch, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Firefly meanwhile scrubbed its launch of its Alpha rocket due to high winds. No new launch date as yet been scheduled. This would be Firefly’s first launch since it had a launch failure in April 2025, followed by a static fire test explosion in September 2025. According to the company, this Alpha launch will be the last of this version before it begins flying an upgraded rocket.

The 2026 launch race:

27 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 25 more Starlink satellites

8:37 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 25 Starlink satellites in orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The 2026 launch race:

26 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

Both SpaceX and Firefly have launches scheduled for later today. The Japanese rocket startup Space One has now rescheduled the third launch attempt of its Kairos rocket for March 3, 2026.

2 comments

Cargo Dragon successfully returns to Earth

11:49 am

A cargo Dragon capsule successfully splashed down in the Pacific late Thursday, February 26, 2026, bringing back several thousand pounds of hardware and experiments.

The ship had been docked at ISS for the past six months, during which it used its engines six different times to raise the station’s orbit. That capability has traditionally been done by Russian Progress freighters, but NASA has been testing other options as they are unsure Russia will remain with the station after 2028. Furthermore, there are risks using Progress to do these reboosts, as the burns take place when Progress is docked to its Zvezda module port, and the hull of the Zvezda module has been developing stress fractures in the past five years that could catastrophically fail.

Not only has Dragon now demonstrated this boost capability, so has Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus capsule.

I strongly expect Russia to stick with ISS for as long as it can, mainly because its own proposed new space station is not likely to launch as presently scheduled later this decade. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Roscosmos has consistently been unable to complete almost any new proposed projects, and the few it has completed launched literally decades late.

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September 2024 Inspector General report, showing Zvezda’s location on ISS, as well as the station’s leak rate at that time. The leaks in Zvezda now appear to have been sealed, but there is no guarantee more stress fractures will not appear as dockings continue at its port.

16 comments

Rocket Lab completes another HASTE suborbital mission

10:45 am

Rocket Lab late yesterday successfully completed its seven HASTE suborbital mission, using the first stage of its Electron rocket to do a hypersonic test mission for the War Department.

In this case, the test vehicle was from the Australian company Hypersonix, and it lifted off from Rocket Lab’s Electron launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia.

This was Rocket Lab’s second flight for this particular military agency in the past three months, and its eleventh overall launch from Wallops Island. The company’s quick reconfiguration of Electron for hypersonic suborbital testing made it possible for it to capture a bulk of the military’s suborbital hypersonic testing business that others, such as Stratolaunch, had hoped to win.

2 comments

February 27, 2026 Quick space links

2:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

17 comments

Mars’ fast moving gigantic lava floods

2:23 pm

A Martian crater broken by flowing lava
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on December 12, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The science team labels this a “crater interrupted by flow.” And what a flow! This unnamed 1.4-mile wide crater was not only filled and partly buried by the flow, that flow was so strong it cut through the crater’s rim at two points, refusing to let that rim block it in any way.

The flow in this case is lava, coming down from the Tharsis Bulge where four of Mars’ biggest volcanoes arose. And that flow was quite vast, as the nearest of those volcanoes, Arsia Mons, is almost 800 miles away. Because of Mars’ relative light gravity, about 39% that of Earth’s, lava on Mars can flow across large distances in a very short time. It might have only taken a few weeks for that flow to cover that 800 miles.
» Read more

7 comments

Early notes of Galileo discovered in margins of Ptolemy’s most famous book

11:20 am

A researcher reviewing the text of a 16th century printing of Claudius Ptolemy’s most famous book, The Almagest (in which he outlined his theory that the Earth stood at the center of the universe), was astonished this January to discover previously unidentified notes in the handwriting of Galileo in the book’s margins.

As [historian Ivan Malara flipped through the pages, he spotted something out of place. Someone had transcribed Psalm 145 on an otherwise blank page—in handwriting reminiscent of a very, very famous Tuscan astronomer.

That book, Malara came to realize, had been extensively annotated by none other than Galileo Galilei. Malara’s discovery, described in a paper now under review at the Journal for the History of Astronomy, promises new insights into one of the most famous ideological transitions in the history of science: the moment when Earth was thrust from the center of our universe.

The article at the link tries to makes the absurd and false claim that “many historians’ typical portrayal of Galileo as being motivated by philosophy or even political savvy, not careful math. ‘He has been presented as a big-picture sort of guy—not interested in the nitty-gritty technical details of astronomy,’ says James Evans, a historian of astronomy at the University of Puget Sound.” The article does this to suggest these newly discovered notes will profoundly change that interpretation.

That interpretation is wrong however. Anyone who has read any histories or biographies of Galileo (as I have) knows this portrayal is false. It is very clear from all his work that Galileo was very evidence-based, focused on the data and facts — the nitty-gritty technical details — to determine the larger picture. And these newly discovered notes confirm this:

Galileo’s notes, perhaps written around 1590, or roughly 2 decades before his groundbreaking telescope observations of the Moon and Jupiter, reveal someone who both revered and critically dissected Ptolemy’s work. And they imply, Malara argues, that Galileo ultimately broke with Ptolemy’s cosmos because his mastery of the traditional paradigm’s reasoning convinced him that a heliocentric system would better fulfill Ptolemy’s own mathematical logic.

Fascinating stuff. I can’t wait to read the final paper.

Leave a comment

Japanese rocket startup Space One to attempt third orbital launch this weekend

10:39 am

Japanese spaceports
Japanese spaceports indicated by red dots

UPDATE: Launch scrubbed due to weather. No new launch date as yet been announced.

The Japanese rocket startup Space One has now scheduled the third launch attempt of its Kairos rocket for this coming Sunday, March 1, 2026, lifting off from its private Spaceport Kii launchpad.

Space One said Friday that it would launch the No. 3 unit of its Kairos small rocket carrying artificial satellites on Sunday morning. The Tokyo-based space development startup canceled the initially scheduled launch on Wednesday, citing a forecast for unfavorable weather conditions.

According to Space One, the Kairos No. 3 unit is set to lift off from the company’s Spaceport Kii launch site in the town of Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, between around 11 a.m. and 11:20 a.m. on Sunday. The rocket will carry five satellites, including one developed by the Taiwan Space Agency.

The two previous launch attempts, in March and December 2024, both failed almost immediately after launch.

A success now by this private company is crucial for Japan, as its government-owned H3 and Epsilon rockets are both grounded due to launch failures.

Leave a comment

China outlines plans for manned space program

10:26 am

China’s state-run press today outlined a short update on the status of its manned space station program as well as its planned manned lunar landing, still targeting a 2030 launch.

For the space station, these are its upcoming plans:

China is scheduled to launch two crewed missions and one cargo spacecraft mission for its space station operation in 2026, according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). An astronaut from the Hong Kong or Macao special administrative region is expected to carry out a space station flight mission as early as this year, the CMSA noted.

One astronaut from the Shenzhou-23 crew will conduct a year-long in-orbit stay experiment, the CMSA said.

I am willing to bet that China is planning an even longer station mission that will break Valeri Polyakov’s 14.5 month record mission, set in the 1990s on Mir.

As for China’s lunar landing plans, nothing new was announced:

China is targeting a crewed lunar landing by 2030. The development of major flight products, including the Long March-10 carrier rocket, the Mengzhou crewed spacecraft, and the Lanyue lunar lander, is proceeding smoothly. Key tests have been completed, including the zero-height abort test for the Mengzhou spacecraft, the landing and takeoff test for the Lanyue lunar lander, the static fire test and the low-altitude demonstration and validation test for the Long March-10 rocket system, and the maximum dynamic pressure escape test for the Mengzhou spacecraft system.

In 2026, the country will intensify efforts to advance the construction of supporting facilities and equipment for the lunar mission at the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in southern Hainan Province, as well as the development of ground support systems.

China has not yet outlined a program of missions leading up to that lunar landing. Like Apollo and now Artemis, it makes sense to do low orbit rendezvous and docking tests of these various spacecraft before heading to the Moon. It also makes sense to do these same tests first in lunar orbit, before landing. Expect China to announce such a program soon, for launch in the 2027-2029 timeframe.

2 comments

Isaacman announces major reshaping of Artemis program

9:54 am

Major reshaping of the program
The program is being changed

During a update press conference today on the status of SLS, NASA administrator Jared Isaacman announced some major changes to the next three Artemis missions.

Isaacman began his remarks by blasting the slow launch cadence of the SLS rocket, noting that all previous NASA launch vehicles averaged about three months between launches, not three years. In order to shorten the SLS cadence to as short as ten months, he has eliminated the upgraded upper stage for SLS, required for the Artemis-3 lunar landing mission. They will standardize the equipment now being used for all further missions. It also suggests the upgraded mobile launcher — needed for that upgraded upper stage — is being canceled, though the officials refused to confirm this. It is far behind schedule and over budget.

Second, Artemis-3 will no longer be a lunar landing. It will instead fly in ’27 as a manned low-Earth-orbit mission to test rendezvous and docking with one or both of the lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. The flight will also test the spacesuits the astronauts will use on the later lunar mission, including possibly a spacewalk.

This change also appears to eliminate the need for Lunar Gateway, though this decision was not stated. Without that upgraded first stage, SLS cannot reach lunar orbit as intended. It appears the plan is to launch crew in Orion and transfer them to the lander in Earth orbit, and transport them to the Moon in those vehicles.

Third, the goal will then be to do two lunar landings in ’28 on Artemis-4 and Artemis-5. It was also clear that this is merely a target, and things could change after the ’27 mission.

These changes all make great sense and face basic reality. It never made sense to attempt the lunar landing after only one manned Artemis mission. The changes also shift focus from SLS and Orion to the rockets and spacecraft being made by the private sector. It attempts to meet Trump’s goal of landing on the Moon by ’28, but also gives the last three budgeted SLS missions a better and more realistic program. Whether SLS as designed can do this remains unclear, but no matter what, this clearly lays the groundwork for that shift from SLS to the private sector.

The officials also made it clear that this plan is still in flux, and will change depending on what happens in the next year or so.

39 comments

Europe’s Jupiter probe Juice releases its first image of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas

9:18 am

Comet 3I/Atlas as seen by Juice
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency’s (ESA) probe Juice, presently on its way to Jupiter, yesterday released its first image of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas from the data it gathered in November 2025 but only now has been able to send back to Earth.

That picture is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the press release:

[T]he science camera on ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) shows interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS spewing dust and gas. The tiny nucleus of the comet (not visible) is surrounded by a bright halo of gas known as the coma. A long tail stretches away from the comet, and we see hints of rays, jets, streams and filaments. The inset in the image shows the same data, but processed to highlight the coma structure.

As also noted in the release, though this comet is from outside our solar system, “its behaviour is completely in line with that expected from a ‘normal’ comet.”

The picture was taken on November 6, 2025, just seven days after the comet made its closest pass to the Sun. At that time Juice took 120 images, which could not be sent back until now because the Sun was in the way. The science team is presently analyzing that data, and plans a full release of its work next month.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 29 Starlink satellites; another booster reaches thirty flights

9:01 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

The first stage (B1069) completed its 30th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight, B1069 becomes the fourth SpaceX first stage to fly thirty times:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1067
31 Falcon 9 booster B1071
31 Falcon 9 booster B1063
30 Falcon 9 booster B1069
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The 2026 launch race:

25 SpaceX
8 China
2 Rocket Lab
2 Russia
1 ULA
1 Europe (Arianespace)

As it did in both ’24 and ’25, SpaceX in ’26 so far has more launches than the entire rest of the world combined.

Rocket Lab’s suborbital launch from two days ago had been scrubbed due to weather, and is now scheduled for later today, lifting off from Wallops Island in Virginia and carrying an Australian hypersonic test vehicle. This won’t count in the totals above, but I will report the results after launch.

Leave a comment

February 26, 2026 Quick space links

2:46 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

9 comments
1 2 3 4 5 6 … 1,152